McLaren rolled into the Hungaroring with scar tissue and a points leader. That combination tends to sharpen a team’s self-awareness, and Martin Brundle thinks it’s also brought Oscar Piastri’s best qualities into focus.
A year on from the 2024 pit-stop shuffle that handed Lando Norris track position and then forced a hand-back, Piastri’s maiden win came with an asterisk and a thousand hot takes. Fast forward to 2025 and the picture’s flipped: Norris won in Budapest, Piastri left as championship leader, and the tension now is about how you manage two title-calibre drivers without tripping over your own feet again.
Brundle, speaking on Sky Sports before the race, summed up the knot that’s tied this duo together. There’s almost nothing between them on pure pace, he said — it ebbs and flows by weekend — but how they deliver it is different. When Norris’ universe aligns, he’s incandescently fast. Piastri, meanwhile, is the metronome: calm, tidy, and relentlessly consistent.
“He’s so confident, he’s so calm, and that calm head when the pressure is really on in the closing stages, I think will be a great asset,” Brundle said. It’s not a throwaway line. With just nine points between Piastri and Norris in the drivers’ standings after Hungary, Piastri’s temperament isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s the thing that may keep his nose in front when the margins pinch.
Hungary offered a neat comparison point. Charles Leclerc stuck it on pole, McLaren looked rapid regardless, and Norris did the winning. Yet Piastri’s start and racecraft kept his lead intact over the long game, the kind of damage-limitation drive that decides championships rather than highlight reels.
Just as importantly, McLaren appear to have learned from last year’s mess. Brundle credited the team for tightening its race-management playbook: the drivers can race, but there’s a clear team game and an understanding of when to play it. That balance is delicate — and rare — when both drivers smell a title. “They’re allowed to be individuals,” Brundle noted, “but if you don’t play the team game, it just takes some pain somewhere else.” Hungary 2024 was the pain. The last 12 months have been the fix.
If you’re keeping score, the narrative arc since that day is striking. As Brundle pointed out, the result in Budapest 2024 proved less a controversy than a pivot. Piastri has been winning with regularity since, and the cool, clinical edge that underpinned his junior career now looks like championship material at the top level.
McLaren didn’t just recover from a PR headache. They built a title fight between two drivers with distinctly different weapons — and they might yet win it because they finally know when to let them spar, and when to call the shot.
